Yeah, but raising their profile didn't save the company either. Not that I am attacking their choice, but I did want to point out that their fan base wasn't strong enough to likely save them. Not to mention how long it took them to translate a game title to a high quality product. I dunno, there are many reasons that WD fell apart, and to be honest, I can't remember any of them.

- "Sometimes life smiles when it kicks you down. The trick is to smile back."

Phyco, there's no connection between their stopping production of SSSC at the end of 1999 and their folding several years later. They were in no danger when they stopped producing SSSC; everything that contributed to their closing happened after that. And it seriously wasn't their doing that their last title took so long to localize, and other titles' localization was delayed by factors outside their control too. It seems a little disingenuous to say that you can't remember any of the reasons right after saying that it took them a long time to translate a game to a high-quality product -- the translation and the quality treatment were NOT what took so long, usually.

Alunissage wrote:Phyco, there's no connection between their stopping production of SSSC at the end of 1999 and their folding several years later. They were in no danger when they stopped producing SSSC; everything that contributed to their closing happened after that. And it seriously wasn't their doing that their last title took so long to localize, and other titles' localization was delayed by factors outside their control too. It seems a little disingenuous to say that you can't remember any of the reasons right after saying that it took them a long time to translate a game to a high-quality product -- the translation and the quality treatment were NOT what took so long, usually.

Thank you, Alun. You more or less took the words right out of my mouth. Too often I see people on here and other sites knocking WD by saying they went under because they spent too much time on the localization process, when really the fact that they went the extra mile and put more effort into making the new English scripts for the games they published sound natural and realistic was what led to them having what success they did enjoy. I mean, let's be honest; if the original Lunar games had been given rush-job translations and bad voice actors hired on the cheap they wouldn't have been nearly the cult classics in the US that they are now. The long delays before releases and WD's eventual demise had more to do with Vic's... um... "interesting" business practices than the time spent on the translation process.

Much as I hate to quibble with someone agreeing with me, I have to still take a bit of exception with your last line. It wasn't Vic's "interesting" business practices that led to the worst delays; it was (usually) Sony's. Growlanser II was done over a year before Generations was released but Sony had required that it be bundled with III. Arc Arena, the entirely optional part of Arc Collection, had a bug that caused it to crash on one model of PlayStation that made up something like 1% of the systems out there, and Sony required that it be fixed before release, which took months. These are just a couple of examples; others, involved other companies. And, of course, there were bugs that WD chose to fix such as the music slowdown in EBC, which had been in the Japanese games.

Wow, it's been a couple of days since I last checked this thread. I thought this topic was supposed to be about supporting our series, drawing in a bigger fan base, and hoping for Lunar 3. Not bashing Working Designs, Vic Ireland, and Sony. Currently I'm working on drawing in a couple of potential fans, my girlfriend (who's a big Final Fantasy fan) and my best friend (who loves RPG's but has never gotten around to playing any Lunar games). I know that most of you have drawn in a lot more fans than that over the years, but I'm new to this whole "recruiting" thing. I also have a friend that IS a Lunar fan, but he's not a member of Lunar-Net. I'm currently trying to get him to sign up. All in all it's a slow process, but at least it's moving in the right direction.

Dwight: "One thing about deer, they have very good vision. One thing about me, I am better at hiding than they are...at vision."

I wasn't knocking WD, nor was I trying to make it sound like I knew something for a fact when I really did not, thus the reason for saying I don't remember the reasons they went under.

They did take a long time to localize something, I wasn't bashing them for it. Why would I? I'm a fan for their games because they took so long to make everything so nice and polished.

Besides, take out any sort of revenue, then that is just less money in your pockets that goes into the companies bank account. There is no way to tell if stopping production of Lunar led either directly or in-directly to WDs demise. Yet, there is still the logic of less revenue = faster folding out, right? No? Maybe?

- "Sometimes life smiles when it kicks you down. The trick is to smile back."

phyco126 wrote:I wasn't knocking WD, nor was I trying to make it sound like I knew something for a fact when I really did not, thus the reason for saying I don't remember the reasons they went under.

They did take a long time to localize something, I wasn't bashing them for it. Why would I? I'm a fan for their games because they took so long to make everything so nice and polished.

Besides, take out any sort of revenue, then that is just less money in your pockets that goes into the companies bank account. There is no way to tell if stopping production of Lunar led either directly or in-directly to WDs demise. Yet, there is still the logic of less revenue = faster folding out, right? No? Maybe?

Yeah, I understand. I probably shouldn't have said you were "bashing" Working Designs or that the other posters were "bashing" Vic Ireland and Sony. Ultimately, I was just trying to point out that this thread had gotten a bit off topic. That's all I meant by any of that. I'm sorry.

Dwight: "One thing about deer, they have very good vision. One thing about me, I am better at hiding than they are...at vision."

If I may chime in, I think we already have Lunar 3 (Eternal Blue). Lunar was supposed to be a trilogy (the first about Dyne and co), then Lunar: Silver Star (Alex and Lunar), and finally, Eternal Blue (Hiro and Lucia).

If anything, I hope to see a Luanr 0, of sorts, about Dyne. I'd love to see his story told. After Lunar: Dragon Song, I want no more of any more Lunar loves indirectly connected with the original plot.

"All you have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to you." -Gandalf the Gray

It wasn't "supposed to be" a trilogy. The scenario writer had three stories in mind, but that's not the same as planning to have three GAMES. For that matter, Lunar 2 was originally planned to take place shortly after Lunar 1, with the original party as playable characters. Interesting as Dyne's story is, it's really not on the same scale. The end of it, with the Black Dragon or Althena's rebirth, depending on which version you go by, is really part of Lunar 1's story since it's the setup, and the actual heroism of the Four Heroes is left as vague as any other bit of backstory and may even be pretty generic and standard for Dragonmasterly doings, for all we know.

Alunissage wrote:It wasn't "supposed to be" a trilogy. The scenario writer had three stories in mind, but that's not the same as planning to have three GAMES. For that matter, Lunar 2 was originally planned to take place shortly after Lunar 1, with the original party as playable characters. Interesting as Dyne's story is, it's really not on the same scale. The end of it, with the Black Dragon or Althena's rebirth, depending on which version you go by, is really part of Lunar 1's story since it's the setup, and the actual heroism of the Four Heroes is left as vague as any other bit of backstory and may even be pretty generic and standard for Dragonmasterly doings, for all we know.

To elaborate a bit on Alun's point, it's been said by at least one of the creators of the series in interviews that the structure of Lunar 1 and 2 was originally conceived of as being parallel to how people relate to older and younger generations. The original Four Heroes are the older generation; we hear stories about what our parents did before we were born, and sometimes we are affected by the things they did, but we never really know the whole story. The cast of Lunar 1 is our own generation; we make big decisions about how to live our lives, and those decisions can potentially affect the world around us. The cast of Lunar 2 is the younger generation; eventually, our children will have to deal with the fallout of our actions and the world we have helped shape for them.

Unfortunately, this parallel ended up getting a bit lost in translation as the series went along. EB was originally intended to be the actual next generation of heroes immediately following TSS, but the creators felt that they had to put more time between the two stories because having all the characters from Lunar 1 show up again would be a logistical nightmare. Then, SSSC greatly reduced the impact of Alex and Luna's role in the greater history of Lunar by establishing that Althena had already made the decision to relinquish her status as a Goddess before either of them had been born; this makes the theme of the cast of Lunar 2 being the symbolic "children" of the cast of Lunar 1 less apparent, as the fallout from Althena's big decision isn't at the hands of Alex and Co.

ETA: Here's where those interviews are, from the Lunar I+II Artbook.

Kazunari Tom (Managed project planning and main program of TSS): The impetus for making "Lunar I" was to make an RPG setting that hadn't been seen before. For example, things like the clothing designs all resembled each other in RPG's until then. We wanted a completely different location that could still feel familiar, so we thought, "what if we do it on the moon?" This was the beginning of "Lunar I."The first problem we suffered through was that the story would be that there were formerly heroes who were adults, and there would be new heroes acting in a different generation, and if this were the case, we couldn't show both of them on the screen at once. So I then talked with Mr. Shigema, and after we set up things like what the old heroes had done and how the resulting world had become, we created the story of new youths.

Kei Shigema (script writer for TSS, scenario writer for EB): Right, the story of the battle Dyne and Ghaleon and the others fought. Next is the story of Arhes in "Lunar I," then comes "Lunar II" here. I can't say it's a saga, but if you look at "Yoshimune" and "Dynasty" now you'll understand, how these sagas are actually three-staged stories, and there's basically the three stories of the parent, the child, and the grandchild. The story itself starts with the parent's generation, there's the parent's generation and the child's generation, and finally the grandchild's generation. The reason for this is that the audience's stance is always that of the child's generation, or now, in other words. You look at now, the present, and then the past generation of the parent, and then the future that may come to be. In that sense, when making a drama, you have to take a stance where you think about the history. So at the time I started the story for the Lunar world, I had to first make the story for the parent's generation. That's how I thought of the story of the Four Heroes. Then, the world of "Lunar I" was finished, there was an atmosphere, and there was the future. Therefore, if we hadn't been able to make "Lunar II" to continue in that future, I think it would have come into existence as a drama. And since the chance to make "Lunar II" did come about, I thought, "Well, why don't I paint a picture of the grandchild's generation that was in the background."

Well, I guess I got the wires crossed, then. My mistake, When I learned that the creators planned three stories, I thought that it meant "3 games". So, from there on I always assumed that Lunar 2 was actually supposed to be "Lunar 3" and thought that's why I never got another sequel.

"All you have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to you." -Gandalf the Gray

LunarRaptor wrote:Well, I guess I got the wires crossed, then. My mistake, When I learned that the creators planned three stories, I thought that it meant "3 games". So, from there on I always assumed that Lunar 2 was actually supposed to be "Lunar 3" and thought that's why I never got another sequel.